Terror attacks kill five, wound 16 across Egypt

Egyptian security forces and rescue workers carry an injured person on a stretcher after a small bomb exploded in a metro train on Nov. 13, 2014 in the capital Cairo.

Two Egyptian policemen and three soldiers were killed in a terror attack in Sinai on Thursday, while a bomb explosion at a metro train in Cairo injured 16 people.

In the Sinai attacks, militants set up roadblocks and stopped vehicles with troops or policemen, officials said.

In one attack, near town of Sheikh Zuweyid, militants dragged three soldiers out of their car and killed them. In the other attack, two policemen were snatched from their vehicle near the border town of Rafah and shot to death.

The officials say victims in both attacks were off duty and in civilian clothes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

Northern Sinai has been under the state of emergency since a militant attack on an army checkpoint last month killed 31 soldiers there.

Meanwhile, 16 people were injured in a panicked crush on a Cairo metro train after a bomb explosion.

Egypt has been hit by a wave of attacks since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last year, infuriating his supporters.

Metro authority spokesman Ahmed Abdel Hady said the “sound bomb” had been placed inside a bag, leading to panic on the train.

The blast came after the Egyptian military said one of its navy vessels came under “terrorist” attack on Wednesday in the Mediterranean, leaving five servicemen injured and eight others missing at sea.

Last week a bomb on a train north of the capital killed four people, including two policemen, while blasts in the Cairo metro and near a presidential palace wounded several others.

Egypt is fighting an Islamist militant insurgency that has killed scores of policemen and soldiers, but a maritime attack is unprecedented.

Many of the previous attacks have been claimed by the Sinai-based jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which on Monday pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.